Archive Panic: Eight series across two timelines means you're going to be at it for quite awhile. The classic series alone has over 30 titles. Add in all of the sequel series, and you're up to around 70. Including all of the ports, remakes and mobile games, and you have well over 100 titles to cover. Good luck!

Broken Base: The fanbase in general is littered with series loyalty wars. The wars are very noticeable on sites that report on all kinds of Mega Man news, and conflicts most often start when believable rumors of a new Mega Man game arise. Some of the more noticeable ones at the moment include:

Possibly some of the criticism is also because the games are essentially a new Mega Man for a new generation. Everyone who knew Mega Man from the starting game would be an adult by the time Battle Network began, and many of the new players recruited to Network hadn't been around to experience the original games. So in a sense, the base is less "broken" and more supplemented by a new branch that's inherently separate from the old.

Provided players don't deplore RPG gameplay, there isn't much to legitimately complain about in the Network series, which keeps the same fundamental focus of fighting variously-themed cyberpunk characters utilizing collected weapons. Indeed, most of the characters in Battle Network are tributes to those in the classic, most-iconic, phase of the original timeline, so in a sense it feels more familiar than Mega Man games from X-onward.

Some EXE fans dislike Ryuusei/Star Force mainly due to changes to the battle system that put a greater emphasis on luck and stats rather than strategy. Ryuusei fans that equally dislike EXE argue that getting rid of the code system allowed for more fluid folder customization. There are times where some fans of one or both sides will make it apparent that they absolutely loathe each other.

The recent announcement of an EXE/Ryuusei crossover game in the works ignited some hot controversy on all sides of BOTH the above conflicts.

There are even wars within some of the individual fanbases. The first half of the EXE series versus the second half (or EXE4 versus the rest of the EXE series), the first half of the X series versus the second half, the Classic debates over 8-bit graphics versus other graphic styles (mostly brought up by the 9th Classic game), and so on.

There's also the fights that start whenever a new Capcom vs. Whatever game is announced. People argue back and forth over which Mega Man should make it in.

Or Zero, or Proto Man, or Roll, or Bass, or Axl, or Wily...

Most fans don't really care whether it's Mega Man or Rockman, only slightly preferring whichever one they were introduced to first. You wouldn't know it to look at any dedicated fan site, which are convinced that their translation (usually Rockman) is better, and everyone else are uncultured morons.

Turns out the only game resembling a proper Mega Man title for the 25th Anniversary would be what started out as a fan game, then taken under Capcom's wing to be released on December 17th for free. Depending on who you ask, Street Fighter X Mega Man is either a friendly nod to the fans, or Capcom digging themselves even deeper.

The Man of Action Studios cartoon announced in 2015. Proof that Capcom still considers Mega Man relevant, or a half-arsed attempt to cover their behinds over his treatment? Doesn't help that the only thing Mega Man related at that years E3 was yet anotherCompilation Re-release of the first six classic games, either.

When the show's premise and Mega Man's new design were revealed: an interesting reimagining of the character and the classic series, or a half-baked clone of Ben 10 that tries too hard to combat Mega Man's waning relevancy?

Ear Worm: The classic series is renowned for its excellent soundtracks, with many tunes that WILL stay stuck to your head for days.

Fandom Rivalry: With Street Fighter. Mostly because Capcom seems to favor Street Fighter over Mega Man in recent years, further compounded by Ryu slowly taking place as company mascot over the blue bomber.

First Installment Wins: All of the different series have more than their fair share of fans, but when people think Mega Man, it's usually the Classic series that instantly comes to mind, and is the most iconic of them all. The X series follows shortly after.

Ironically subverted by the actual bat-like bots in most games. They are nearly always a reliable source of health and weapon capsules.

Harsher in Hindsight: Remember over the course of the 2000s when people did "endless sequels" jokes for the Mega Man franchise and thought that Capcom did WAY too many Mega Man games over the years? Plenty of people (including shows like X-Play) wanted to HATE Capcom for making so many Mega Man games over the course of the 2000s. However in the 2010s people wanted to hate Capcom for not giving the Mega Man series enough attention nowadays making the old "far too many sequels" jokes at the Mega Man series a bit awkward.

Internet Backdraft: Ever since the string of cancellations and Keiji Inafune's departure from Capcom in 2011, the fanbase has been carrying on like a spurned lover. Despite a handful of attempts to acknowledge the franchise in the years since, everything Capcom does or produces that isn't a full platformer or action RPG is met with derision or vitriol from some sector.

The only hint of anything even acknowledging the Blue Bomber's 30th anniversary were ports of the classic NES games to mobile devices... which, upon release, proved to be total garbage. While almost nobody was surprised considering that the last attempt to port a Mega Man game to mobile was just as spectacular of a failure, the ports were a smashing success at killing the last bit of hope the fandom had that the franchise would have any kind of serious future.

Misaimed Fandom: There are still fans out there who believe that Proto Man was a villain in 5. Anyone who actually made it far enough in the game would know that it was Dark Man, not Proto Man, who kidnapped Dr. Light. Dark Man wasn't even the real villain. He was a Disc-One Final Boss in yet anotherWily scheme, and Proto Man shows up during an encounter with the aforementioned Dark Man to point out which robot is the impostor to his little brother. The fact that Proto Man actually was a villain in the TV show did not help his case.

Most Annoying Sound: Some of the sound effects — such as an energy bar filling up or the constant sound of your Mega Buster charging — that overlap some channels used for the music in the NES games, due to a lack of sound channels. If you're relatively new to the series, or games in general, the death sound effect will drill itself into your memory banks.

There is also the shrill, whistling noise that Dr. Wily's ship produces that's become closely associated with him.

Surprisingly Improved Sequel: It's practically tradition for the second game in a series to be leaps and bounds better than a rather meh first, and successively improves (at least until the end of the NES era). The exceptions to this rule are Mega Man Star Force, which took until the third game for this to take effect, Mega Man X, where the first is often considered better while the second installment being rather forgettable and only the third, fourth, fifth, and to a far lesser extent the eighth installments considered to be on the same level as the first, and the Mega Man Gameboy games, where the second game is arguably the weakest game in the whole Classic era while the fifth one is most well remembered for not entirely retreading old ground and is one of the few Gameboy titles that can actually stand alongside the NES titles.

Cartoon Series

Anti-Climax Boss: Quick Man from Mega Man 2 is generally considered one of the more dangerous Robot Masters, as you could probably tell by his namesake. In this series, he is quickly defeated when Roll drops a bust on him at a museum.

Bizarro Episode: Despite the episodes being self-contained, "Curse of the Lion Men", "Master of Disaster", and "Night of the Living Monster Bots" are certainly...out there.

Base-Breaking Character: The show's incarnation of Roll usually gets criticism for the fact that she's ineffective (this, of course, will depend on the way episodes are written), and whose weaponry amounts to household equipment that is part of her job. She gets defense, however, for the fact that she is far more ambitious and proactive than that of the character from the games, who usually stands in the sidelines.

Harsher in Hindsight: In "Robosaur Park", Mega Man and Roll are de-evolving into cavebots, and Dr. Light only has enough antidote for one of them. Roll says Mega should take it; he refuses at first, but she says he's the one with the best chance of stopping Wily. He agrees and takes it, and is able to save the day. In 10, a similar scene played out, only sadder.

It was even the tenth episode. The only way this could be any more uncanny is if Slash Man appeared in 10 instead of 7.

He did appear in 10, as part of the Weapons Archive boss.

In "Mega X", X takes a liking to Mega Man, saying he's the most optimistic robot he's ever met. When you remember what happens in the X series, and how Zero is X's only friend...

Everything about "The Big Shake" in lieu of the Japanese earthquake.

"Mega-Pinocchio" has Mega Man lead a robot rebellion after having his mind tampered with. The concept of a robot built by Dr. Light doing this later cropped up in the fangame Rock Force, but without Wily being behind it.

Hilarious in Hindsight: In "Showdown at Red Gulch", Wily uses energy from a meteor to power up his robots; however, soon it leaves them drained and weak. In Mega Man 8, guess what happened?

The plot, however, was probably taken from the third game, which involved Power Crystals. But, the ideas were used in 8.

In "Mega-Pinocchio", Wily decides to make Light a Hero with Bad Publicity. So he reprograms his robots and sends them on a rampage, so Light is blamed for the attacks. In 9, he did essentially the same thing, though amplified by making himself a Villain with Good Publicity. Both scenarios even had a female reporter who was quick to blame Light for the misdeeds.

In separate episodes, this robot◊ and this robot◊ appear, respectively, Shade Man has a vampire motif, much like Dracubot, while the quarterback robot bears a big resemblance to GridMan.EXE from Mega Man Battle Network 5.

Strike Man from MM10 could easily pass for the baseball equivalent of the aforementioned quarterbot.

In "Ice Age", both Ice Man and Air Man will not die. They're finally defeated in the last 2 minutes after defeating Mega Man, Roll, and Rush in every other encounter.

In "Mega X", Dr. Cain, rather than looking like his game self, looks like Gordon Freeman.

In "Future Shock", Wily has taken over the city in a span of thirty years and exiled Light and Roll because Mega Man wasn't around to stop him. In The Protomen, Wily takes over the city and exiles Light in about thirty years because there isn't a Mega Man to stop him.

In "Future Shock", the robot police have wolf-like robo-dogs with a purple color scheme. This was before 6 and 7 came out, the latter of which had the first appearance of Treble, Bass's purple robot wolf.

In "Mega Dreams", Proto Man refers to Wily as "Lord Wily" when they're in a medieval-related dream. In Battle Network, Wily's counterpart is called Lord Wily.

In "Electric Nightmare", Mega offers Roll a broom when she offers to go out fighting; she karate chops it in half rather than use it. In both Mega Man Powered Up and Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, classic!Roll uses a broom and only a broom as a weapon.

"Robo-Spider" has a robot museum with figures of the heroes, Cut Man, Guts Man, and Proto Man. In Mega Man 7, a robot museum was featured with the real Guts Man, who was then stolen by Wily.

"Mega X" has Wily teaming up with Vile, and by proxy, Sigma. He teams up with Sigma definitively in Mega Man X5 and Rockman Xover.

"Bad Day at Peril Park" involved Dr. Light being concerned that Dr. Wily had discovered some way to transform humans into robots. Many years later, the comic book version of Dr. Wily teamed up with Dr. Eggman, a guy who had the technology to do just that.

Proto Man, while pretending to be a good guy, never freaking stops touching Mega Man.

I Am Not Shazam: The amusement park in "Bad Day at Peril Park" is called Fun World, not Peril Park.

Jerkass Woobie: Bomb Man and Cut Man considering how many times they are destroyed.

The Robot Masters in "The Day the Moon Fell" come off as this too if you think about it. You can tell that even they think Wily's plan to bring the entire planet to the brink of a full-scale apocalypse is completely bat-shit insane. Unfortunately, being Wily's robots, they're programmed to help him succeed and there's nothing they can do about it. You kinda feel sorry for them if you think about it like that...

Moral Event Horizon: Wily was willing to move the moon out of its orbit, threatening the WORLD, to prove he was better than Dr. Light. His robots questioned this; they went along with it, but they questioned this act as well.

Later, even Proto Man was concerned about how close the moon is getting, pointing out that if he keeps this up there won't be much left of the world to take over. Wily's response was to laugh in his face and ask if he was getting nervous.

In "The Big Shake", he created earthquakes to force cities to surrender... and threatened to destroy them if they didn't.

Later in the episode, Wily discovered Light was working on a device to stop his earthquake machine. His response was to direct a maximum-powered earthquake directly at Light's lab in an attempt to kill them all. And after the deed was done, with Wily believing Mega, Roll, and Light dead? He stops celebrating in about two seconds and goes on to threaten the mayor.

In "Bro Bots", his plan involving Proto Man as a Heel–Face Mole crosses the line. While Proto Man enacted the plan, it was Wily's idea, and when Proto Man gave a hint to Mega Man about the scrambler chip, Wily ordered Proto Man to destroy Mega Man.

My Real Daddy: In terms of voice acting, Scott Mcneil's epically hammy performance as Wily has caused many to view him as the definitive voice of the character. He's the sole reason people always give Wily a German accent in fanworks.

Narm Charm: In "Bro Bots" a lot of the lines are overacted at times, but how are you feeling by the time the episode ends? Sad.

One-Scene Wonder: Many of the Robot Masters make only a brief appearance or two in a single episode and are never seen again, such as Fire Man, Stone Man, Crash Man, Pharaoh Man, and many others. See Fridge Horror for a possible explanation...

Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: If not for this cartoon, Top Man would only have been known as an easy boss with a ridiculous weapon to many fans.

So Bad, It's Good: The show itself seem to mostly verge into So Okay, It's Average territory, but if there's a part of it the fans agree on is laughably bad, are all those puns that are being thrown to hell and back during fights.

Unfortunate Implications: This video shows London is somehow still in its Victorian era, and they can't seem to tell that the "Mummy" is a robot, plus the stereotypes. What's worse, later in the episode, they're carrying pitchforks and torches to fight the "Mummy", there's always the theory that the episode was just a movie that was being filmed, but that doesn't really stop the implications.

Moral Event Horizon: Wily, having captured Roll, torments her about her creation, giving her existential crises and causing the poor girl to cry.

And then he has Copy Mega Man throw her out of the Skull Fortress, which happens to be several miles above ground.

Special Effects Failure: While most of the CG is surprisingly good, there are a couple of bad spots; namely Wily's rather unimpressive war pod and the extremely fake looking smoke coming from Ice Man's chest.

There's also the crappy green screen effects and muted or non-present sound effects from time to time.

The CG-generated Robot Masters were also a bit awkward in movements and rendering, despite the overall quality of the models.

Broken Base: Fan response to the announcement of an officially licensed Mega Man movie were largely mixed, especially on Twitter. The most divisive factor with the announcement was the indication that it was going to be live-action instead of animated, and fans are quick to make comparisons to Super Mario Bros. with this idea, even though the film hasn't started production just yet. Many prefer seeing an Animated Adaptation instead.

Anti-Climax Boss: Whenever a game gets adapted, the Robot Masters and assorted major enemy robots really don't come across as major threats since Rock can defeat most of them within two pages, though this is something of a necessary evil due to having to compress six/eight Robot Masters and Dr. Wily's fortress of the week (with all the major enemies located within) within the span of four issues. It can be justified with the first arc, though, since Mega Man was made for combat while the Robot Masters were made for industrial use.

Arc Fatigue: The arc adapting Mega Man 2 ended at issue 12. The arc adapting Mega Man 3 started at issue 41. In between all of that was the introductory arc for the Emerald Spears, Proto Man's backstory, the Ra Moon arc based off of Super Adventure Rockman, the crossover with Sonic the Hedgehog interrupting it, the conclusion of the Ra Moon arc, a set-up for the story of Mega Man 3 that got interrupted with a story arc involving Mega Man X, and then finally the story of Mega Man 3. With yet another crossover in between the 3 adaptation and the final few issues before the hiatus, you'd swear Ian Flynn was trying to hold off on writing the story for Mega Man 4 if not for the fact that said final issues set it up.

Author's Saving Throw: Oil Man had originally gotten a lot of flak for his originaldesign, particularly his lips, which were even recolored from pink to yellow in the American release of Mega Man Powered Up. So what does Archie do when they include him? Hide his lips behind his scarf. Truth be told, Oil Man looks more menacing that way.

Xander Payne, with some viewing him as a breath of fresh air while others think that he's an annoying Creator's Pet. The fact that he's the one who became Mr. X does not help.

Dr. Lalinde. Some see her as an interesting foil to Dr. Light and want to see more of her, while others think her erasing Tempo's emotions is horrible and agree with Blues when he says it's unforgivable.

Dr. Light became this in later arcs, with some seeing him as a good, if flawed, parent to Mega Man and Roll while others see him as dangerously naive and self-righteous in how he treats the Robot Masters.

Tempo/Quake Woman is either seen as an interesting character who adds depth to the series and has a good design, or a boring OC whose design clashes with other humanoid robots. Her Emotionless Girl personality also tainted initial fan reactions, and when her personality was semi-restored debates sprang up over which one was better for her as a character.

Broken Base: The comic's sudden hiatus post Worlds Unite has the fans panicking and coming up with theories as to what's going on. Burnout on Ian's part? The failure of the Kickstarter towards the Archie reboot coming back to bite Archie in the rear? Old policies coming back to haunt them? Even more, is this truly a hiatus or is this Archie taking it behind the shed to be shot where the rotting corpse of the Ni GHTS Into Dreams comic was hidden away with the same reasoning?

Complete Monster: Ra Moon is a sinister AI who crash-landed on Earth centuries ago with aspirations of control. Manipulating an ancient civilization into worshipping it—and even establishing bloody ritual sacrifice in its name—Ra Moon eventually tires of its slaves and decimates the entire civilization whilst sealing itself underground. Upon returning from dormancy in the present day and being found by Dr. Wily, Ra Moon placidly provides for Wily's conquests before betraying the doctor and revealing its intention to scour the planet of both humans and robots alike, unleashing a global EMP wave and causing worldwide catastrophe. Intending on powering up its wave to boil out the brains of any humans it hasn't already killed, Ra Moon's response to resistance is to turn Wily's own creation against him and order it to start maiming Dr. Wily before murdering him, and brainwashing every Robot Master that stands against it.

Tempo/Quake Woman is popular with fans, some wishing she becomes a Canon Immigrant.

Growing the Beard: The comic really starts coming into its own at the "Spiritus Ex Machina" story arc. The plot and pacing gets more nuanced, the comic starts exploring some darker themes, a more solid overall plot is set up, and several important characters are introduced.

Near the end of Issue #44, Mega Man comforts Spark Man by saying that Dr. Light will reprogram him and that he will be reunited with his brothers. Once he and his brothers do get reprogrammed five issues later though, half of them choose to be decommissioned. Poor Spark Man...

Issue #53 has Guts Man mention how he'd like to be put up on display in the newly built Robot Museum once his time was up - a thought Mega Man finds distressing. Those who've played Mega Man 7 will know this will not only come to pass, but Mega Man will have to battle Guts Man again.

Hilarious in Hindsight: In "The Return of Dr. Wily" Arc, the mad roboticist starts claiming he's using technology "From Beyond the Stars" and pretends to be an alien. Next arc, he discovers Ra Moon which is alien technology!.

Tainted by the Preview: The unveiling for the first original story arc (Spiritus Ex Machina) had attracted a negative reception. Thankfully, this eventually got better as the issues came out.

They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: An accidental case since the comic was abruptly canceled, but Vesper Woman added a cute, active little sister dynamic for Tempo and opened the door for more OC robots, but only appeared in the second-last issue.

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